We all know that we are in one of the worst economies since the early 80's. I'm not going to talk about how we got here, but how can we survive it. Just when we thought that job losses were slowing down, it was announced that jobless claims increased. If you have lost your job and even if you currently have one, there are two important things you need to continue to grow...Your skills and your social network.

Cheryl Palmer who is a certified executive career coach at Call To Career in Silver Spring, Md. says "Never take your career for granted. You should be constantly updating your skills and keeping your network viable. Too many people get too comfortable in their jobs and don't think about what may come next."

If you are in the technical field, you have hit the right spot.. developerWorks. Not only can you grow your skills using developerWorks resources, but you can grow your technical network using the developerWorks community. Check out "New to the Community".

Also, consider growing your skills by taking a tutorial , and watching a technical demo of products and technologies that may interest you.

All this may help you get certified on a product or technology that you can add to your resume.

Developing the right products for the right market at the right time is no simple task. That is where IBM® Rational® Focal Point™ comes in -- a configurable, Web-based product and portfolio management solution that links strategy to execution. During this demo, you'll see how Focal Point helps promote successful products by helping product teams and stakeholders focus on what is most important to your customer and to your business.

In a previous job at IBM, I was so fortunate to be able to visit many universities and I had the great opportunity to talk with a lot of faculty and students. The most popular question I had from students was "how can I best differentiate myself to get a job". I imagine with this current economy, every student is asking this question today.

First, my answer for techy students was differentiate yourself by learning development tools outside of the classroom For example, if you have not learned to use Eclipse you need to. It is a great open source IDE that will help you build better code faster, not to mention that it is an extremely popular tool. So when you are on an interview, mention all the development tools you have learned outside of the classroom. This shows your hunger for knowledge and the desire to go above and beyond.

Second, get certified on one or more development tools. The IBM Academic initiative provides students with a 50% discount on certifications on IBM products. This always looks good on your resume and again shows that you go above and beyond.

Third, be aware of the trends and movements in technology and software development. Drop some lines of how you are interested in Cloud Computing. Talk about how you want to create software that improves the planet and comment on how it will be software development teams, who will continue to transform and create a Smarter Planet through software. You will blow their socks off.

Andask these question at your interview: "What development tools do you use to enable global teams to communicate efficiently through the software development process? How do you automate project status and efficiently track progress of the project, to build better quality software faster"? You might want to mention that you heard IBM has some great development tools that help do these tasks!" They will be stunned!

Download Eclipse at eclipse.org

Here is a demo on Eclipse you should check out: Eclipse and Amazon Web Service (AWS) Learn how to use the Amazon Web Services toolkit for Eclipse. This demo shows you how to create a simple Java Web application, hello world, and deploy it to the cloud. Eclipse installed and setup. You will also need to have an Amazon account.

Welcome to my world of demos and technical videos. Is anyone out there interested in using Eclipse or using Eclipse today? If you are interested in becoming familiar with Eclipse, here is a very useful demo that will help you get started. Learn what Eclipse and the Eclipse foundation is, how and where to download the Eclipse platform, and how to setup and install Eclipse with Apache Tomcat and the Java™ Development Kit.

It is amazing that in the last few years, so many companies are jumping on the Green bandwagon. I question some companies I see peddling their products in the name of green. But how about software companies? Can we find the value in Green for software? In the traditional sense, software isn't the first thing people think of when you say Green. We often think of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle with a 1970's perspective. For example, reduce your energy use, recycle materials, and find alternate energy sources. But to make this a better planet, we need to continue to challenge ourselves and look beyond. Not only in our personal lives, but at work as well.

As business people or software developers you may be currently participating in optimized multi-site collaboration and reducing travel, workload costs, and fuel emissions. You may be involved in a multi-site development effort, modernizing legacy applications with SOA services. Now that is the new Green or am I taking huge liberties?

In the developerWorks portfolio of demos, we have a great example of team tools that shows the integration with IBM® Rational® Build Forge and IBM Rational Team Concert. These tools work together seamlessly to provide software assembly for Jazz and traditional muti-site development environments simultaneously. Check out the demo!

So do you think companies are exploiting the whole Green movement? Do you think you can find the value in Green for software?

Let me know what you think and what is your favorite Green commercial? Here is mine!

Software development needs to be smart. Development tool integration is key to smart software development. Let's talk about Rational® Requirements Composer, which is a suite of requirements definition and business prototyping tools. Its graphical editors enable you to quickly develop requirements, construct use cases, build glossaries, create business processes and design user interface sketches and storyboards.

When you define requirements with IBM®Rational Requirements Composer, you can elicit, capture, elaborate, discuss, and review requirements using a variety of requirements definition techniques and collaboration capabilities. Rational Requirements Composer integrates with IBM Rational RequisitePro®, IBM Rational DOORS, and the Jazz-based products IBM Rational Team Concert™ and IBM Rational Quality Manager. Rational Requirements Composer also integrates with IBM Rational Software Architect and other Rational Software Delivery Platform products. Could a development team ask for anything more? Integration and communication is key to a smart development environment, which reduces risks and costs, by increasing team communication within the team tool set.

See the new capabilities in IBM® Rational® Requirements Composer, which expands this application from requirements definition to requirements management. This demo shows you reporting, the Web interface, Web review and approval, collections and snapshots, and collaborative application lifecycle management.

It is all part of creating a smarter planet, beginning with software development!